We often think of our birthdays as a celebration of life and friendship, so when it goes badly, we take it personally. Even some minuscule inconvenience that wouldn't bother us on any other day might be forever ingrained in our memory if it were to happen during this special occasion.
So when one Reddit post asked its users what was the "suckiest" thing that happened on their birthday, it didn't take long before people flooded it with all sorts of personal stories. Continue scrolling to check out which of them we think takes the cake.
#1
I miscarried on my birthday last year.
But I'm pregnant again (9 months along now and due anyday) and my due date is my birthday. Expecting my birthday to be much better this year!
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258points
#2
Well, my dad forgot my 14th birthday. Then I got to school, and decided to wait if any of my friends would remember.
During the last period, some kid was on facebook on his phone, and suddenly bursted "is it your birthday, dude??" That was even more embarassing than noone remembering.
Moral of the story: Your birthday will never be as important to other people as it is to you. Don't expect much after the age of 12
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219points
We want our birthdays to be perfect. But that's impossible — too many things are out of our control. "With language, humans can imagine idealizations, figments of ultimate satisfaction, heaven, Mr. or Ms. Perfect, or the perfect birthday," social science writer and researcher Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., MPP, told Bored Panda.
"Language also makes human life a total cluster flux, very far from ideal because with everyone walking around trying to achieve their ideals the world gets very messy. We are a visionary and delusional species, we are an anxious and dreamy species. Every little deformity can remind us of how far we are from the ideal. That's what freaks us out."
Sherman believes that when we were very young, we are imprinted on birthday idealizations, which can make birthdays kind of ironic: juvenile idealizations to mark us as getting older and older.
#3
Last year our family dog had to be put to sleep on my birthday. His stomach flipped the week before and caused irreparable damage. He’d already had it turn a few years ago. My mum went to pick him up and the vet told her he wasn’t going to recover and was in pain. I got a phone call on my way to work where she was distraught. Thankfully my manager was incredible and let me use a sick day to go home. I had to arrange the home visit to put him to sleep because my mum couldn’t do it. I called my dad to tell him (my parents are divorced and he hadn’t seen the dog in years.) I arranged everything so he could be brought home and go to sleep peacefully with me, my mum, and my sister. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My birthday is two weeks before Christmas and I’d already got him a present.
This big goofball got me through my parents’ divorce and the hardest breakup I’ve been through. I’m in my late twenties and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
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207points
#4
On my 27th birthday my mum died. I don't celebrate my birthday anymore.
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201points
#5
On my 6th birthday my dad openly said on the phone he wished I wasn't born so he didn't have to waste money on me. He didn't know I heard him then got mad when I said I wanted to go back to my moms. Yeah we didn't get along for a long time
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191points
However, there are things we can do to prepare ourselves for and cope with uncertainty, and according to Sherman, it starts with "taking stock of the human condition, recognizing that it's nothing personal, it's just what it means to be human."
"The psychologist Ernest Becker described us as Gods with anuses, meaning that we can imagine infinite perfection but we're tethered to earthy reality," Sherman explained.
"It's also the cosmic wedgie we got from Darwin: that life is and has always been guesswork where you can guess right how to achieve your ideal and ironically it comes out wrong. If you embrace fallibilism – the realization that no matter how confident you are in a bet, you must remain still more confident that it is a bet – you gain a degree of equanimity about your anxiety."
#6
My mum decided to Celebrate my brothers birthday and not mine. Cards Cake presents. F.Y.I. That was my Twin brother
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182points
#7
On my 16th birthday, my mother was in the middle of a several year long fight with her parents. She told me I should call them to see if they would like to come over for coffee (because she wouldn't call them herself). During the call I'm talking to my grandmother and get the usual "happy birthday" and "how are you" - it's important to note that I haven't seen them in months and we only lived like 10 minutes apart.
So I ask if they would like to come over for coffee and my grandmother says she's going to ask my grandfather if he would like to go. Now I don't know if she didn't realize that she didn't cover the phone, but I heard them talking back and forth a and heard my grandmother say "I don't want to hurt her feelings but I don't want to go over there." I already felt when I was a kid that they didn't love me as much as my older sibling, but this was the conformation that it was true. They couldn't get past their b******t and come see their granddaughter on her birthday. When she began talking to me she said some sort of excuse as to why they couldn't come over. I didn't hear it, I was trying not to cry so I could still talk. We said our "I love you's," though it was hard for me, and hung up. I just went to my room and laid down and cried. I didn't give a s**t about anything and just wanted the day to be over.
My mother had a small surprise party for me by having my friends over, I tried my best to pretend to be happy and have fun, but I just wanted it to end. I was so mad and so hurt that I just wanted to crawl in bed and stay there forever.
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154points
#8
My parents got divorced on my 10th bday. My 11th bday my dad got married to another girl. On my 12th bday they divorced. On my 13th they remarried. 14th divorced. Yes these all happened on my bday or that week
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147points
#9
[Serious Reply] This is something i've grown to deal with...
Since my 18th Birthday, my friends have stood me up each time i plan a get-together or event to celebrate. For my 18th i had simply organised a gathering at a local bar, which they had all initially said they would be more than happy to attend. I arrive and wait for everyone else to turn up... but not one person came. They wouldn't answer my calls of texts, and seemed to be completely off the radar. Turns out they had all made another plan to meet at a different bar, down the road. Safe to say i was pretty upset.... When i approached them about it, they all had similar excuses such as "oh sorry i forgot" or "i didn't realise that was actually happening".
Each year following this, i've attempted to plan something and it has a similar ending. Everyone is up for it, but decides to drop out or just not show up on the day. I'm 21 now, and both of my major milestone birthdays (18th & 21st) have been s**t. I'm fed up of wasting MY money planning MY birthday celebrations, when not one of my 'friends' can be bothered to put in a smallest amount of effort to show their face.
I'm a really happy and cheerful guy... i never normally feel down. I tend to push it all to the back of my head but sometimes it all builds up... Writing this has made me realise that i need to focus on myself more, stop playing other people's games and sort my life out. Thanks for giving me an excuse to rant.
**Edit: I thought it would be easier thanking everyone for such kind comments here. I’ve never openly talked about this before but it’s nice to get some really nice comments from you all. I’m definitely going to look at bettering myself instead of trying to do things for other people all the time.
Thanks again guys, it means a lot to me <3
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143points
#10
Found out my brothers best friend who was 16 passed away in a car accident at my 21st birthday party with my family. Hearing my brother cry that night literally broke my heart.
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136points
#11
Twentieth birthday: I received two letters. First one was that I was being kicked out of uni for poor grades. Second letter was from my doctor that basically said that the reason I have sucked at school my whole life is because I had an underlying learning disability. He even said that it could have been caught and treated much sooner.
Thirtieth Birthday: I got another letter from a different doctor. His exact words were "You were right, you do have Diabetes"
I just had my fortieth birthday last month. Luckily it was on a Sunday. No mail delivery on Sundays where I live.
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131points
#12
On my 40th birthday, my then wife was overseas for business. I was at home with our kids. On my birthday, I took the day off work.
I woke up on the morning of my birthday, and felt terribly ill. I managed to get the kids off to school, and then collapsed on the couch, stayed there for the whole day, picked the kids up after school, and we went to the local food court for dinner.
My then wife came home a couple of days later, at which time I thought that perhaps I might receive some sort of gift, or acknowledgement of my milestone birthday. I got nothing, but I put it down to the fact that my wife had her luggage lost on the way TO the business meeting, and again on the way BACK from the meeting. Allowances could be made I guess, and so I waited.
For over a month.
We went to visit her mother about a month later, as it was my MIL's birthday, and my son;s birthday that same weekend, and I got to go there and see my MIL and my son get all sorts of wonderful presents and cards and stuff, cake, a genuine celebration. I took it all in for about a hour or two, and then I went outside to cool off, because I was getting mightily pissed off. My wife came outside, and asked me why I was in a bad mood.
I exploded, and let her have it, both barrels. All this fuss about these birthdays, and it was over a month since my 40th birthday, and I had not received one CARD, let alone a present, from ANYONE, and now I had to sit there and put up with all of this. It was just too much for me to take.
Anyhow, after my explosion, they all went out and bought me some presents to try and make up for it. I cannot remember a single gift that I received that day. All I remember is that no-one in my family thought to do anything to celebrate my birthday.
For my 50th birthday, my new wife booked a meal at the revolving restaurant at CN Tower in Toronto. We live in New Zealand. My 50th birthday was so much better than my 40th!
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125points
#13
My mother forgot it, then called me a liar when I told her. I had to get my driver's license to prove it.
I was in my late 20s.
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113points
#14
High school one year, my birthday fell on thanksgiving. It was my birthday AND thanksgiving and my boyfriend dumped me. Through text. Using a knock knock joke
Edit: The joke was as follows
Him: Knock Knock
Me: Who’s there?
Him: Single
Me: Single who?
Him: Single you.
Him: Knock Knock
Me: Who’s there?
Him: Single
Me: Single who?
Him: Single you.
He was not very clever, but he did tell the whole school about it proudly
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104points
#15
When we were kids, our mom was taking my twin sister and I plus one friend to Burger King for our birthday present (we were dirt poor, so the meal + a kids toy was a big deal, and we would get to play in the play thing! Exciting stuff!) Mom stopped at the bank, and a cop recognized her as she was going in. Of course she was drunk, because she always was at the time, so she got arrested right in front of us for a DUI.
Our friends mom came and got her immediately, but we were left waiting over an hour in the back of our moms car for our negligent dad to come pick us up. We were both sobbing at this point, but he forced us to go to Burger King anyway, screaming at us the whole time for not being happy enough.
I think we just huddled in the play structure for an hour pretending to play until he let us go home. I remember it was f*****g freezing inside the building and it was probably the most miserable I’ve ever been. That friends mom stopped letting her hang out, and I don’t think we celebrated another birthday until college lmao
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104points
#16
When I was very young, my dad made some food for me but he hid chilli's inside it which he knew that I'm allergic to and found it funny to mess with people's food.
.. well judging by the way he was encouraging me to try it, I knew something was up and refused to eat. This made him furious. He stormed upstairs and grabbed all of my unwrapped birthday presents and threw them downstairs. He proceeded to stamp and crush every single one of them.
Then the next day he made me call every person who bought me these gifts and tell them that I was stupid and broke them. It was humiliating.
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97points
Celebrities have bad birthdays, too; some of their stories are featured in our star-studded birthday fails collection.
#17
My 21st. My gf at the time arranged for a surprise party for me inviting all my friends.
Only one person showed up.
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92points
#18
On my 6th birthday my favorite of two cats had to be put down. I was too young to understand why it couldn't wait until later in the week.
Meatball was great. He let us put our baby doll clothes on him.
Meatball was great. He let us put our baby doll clothes on him.
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89points
#19
My birthday is in February. For my 11th birthday my parents didn’t get me a gift just a card. They said because they bought me a brand new bike at Christmas money was a bit tight.
My brother’s birthday is in June, he also got a brand new bike at Christmas and a brand new PlayStation for his birthday.
Not that big a deal compared to some stories, but not getting a gift from your parents and then your brother getting 2 amazing gifts kinda sucked as a kid.
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88points
